Jason Part 31

"That is a lie!" said Captain Stewart, in a dry whisper. "A lie!"

And Ste. Marie contented himself with a slight smile by way of answer.

He was by no means sure that what he had said was true, but he argued that since Hartley suspected, or perhaps by this time knew so much, he would certainly not allow old David to die without doing what he could do in an effort to save young Arthur's fortune from a rascal. In any event, true or false, the words had had the desired effect. Captain Stewart was plainly frightened by them.

"May I make a suggestion?" asked the younger man.

The other did not answer him, and he made it.

"Give it up!" said he. "You're riding for a tremendous fall, you know.

We shall smash you completely in the end. It'll mean worse than ruin--much worse. Give it up, now, before you're too late. Help me to send for Hartley and we'll take the boy back to his home. Some story can be managed that will leave you out of the thing altogether, and those who know will hold their tongues. It's your last chance, Stewart. I advise you to take it."

Captain Stewart turned his gray face slowly and looked at the other man with a sort of dull and apathetic wonder.

"Are you mad?" he asked, in a voice which was altogether without feeling of any kind. "Are you quite mad?"

"On the contrary," said Ste. Marie, "I am quite sane, and I'm offering you a chance to save yourself before it's too late. Don't misunderstand me!" he continued. "I am not urging this out of any sympathy for you. I urge it because it will bring about what I wish a little more quickly, also because it will save your family from the disgrace of your smash-up. That's why I'm making my suggestion."

Captain Stewart was silent for a little while, but after that he got heavily to his feet. "I think you must be quite mad," said he, as before, in a voice altogether devoid of expression. "I cannot talk with madmen." He beckoned to the old Michel, who stood near-by, leaning upon his carbine, and when the gardener had approached he said, "Take this--prisoner back to his room!"

Ste. Marie rose with a little sigh. He said: "I'm sorry, but you'll admit I have done my best for you. I've warned you. I sha'n't do it again. We shall smash you now, without mercy."

"Take him away!" cried Captain Stewart, in a sudden loud voice, and the old Michel touched his charge upon the shoulder. So Ste. Marie went without further words. From a little distance he looked back, and the other man still stood by the fallen tree-trunk, bent a little, his arms hanging lax beside him, and his face, Ste. Marie thought, fancifully, was like the face of a man d.a.m.ned.

XXIII

THE LAST ARROW

The one birdlike eye of the old Michel regarded Ste. Marie with a glance of mingled cunning and humor. It might have been said to twinkle.

"To the east, Monsieur?" inquired the old Michel.

"Precisely!" said Ste. Marie. "To the east, mon vieux." It was the morning of the fourth day after that talk with Captain Stewart beside the rose-gardens.

The two bore to the eastward, down among the trees, and presently came to the spot where a certain trespa.s.ser had once leaped down from the top of the high wall and had been shot for his pains. The old Michel halted and leaned upon the barrel of his carbine. With an air of complete detachment, an air vague and aloof as of one in a revery, he gazed away over the tree-tops of the ragged park; but Ste. Marie went in under the row of lilac shrubs which stood close against the wall, and a pa.s.ser-by might have thought the man looking for figs on thistles, for lilacs in late July. He had gone there with eagerness, with flushed cheeks and bright eyes; he emerged after some moments, moving slowly, with downcast head.

"There are no lilac blooms now, Monsieur," observed the old Michel, and his prisoner said, in a low voice:

"No, mon vieux. No. There are none." He sighed and drew a long breath.

So the two stood for some time silent, Ste. Marie a little pale, his eyes fixed upon the ground, his hands chafing together behind him, the gardener with his one bright eye upon his charge. But in the end Ste.

Marie sighed again and began to move away, followed by the gardener.

They went across the broad park, past the double row of larches, through that s.p.a.ce where the chestnut-trees stood in straight, close rows, and so came to the west wall which skirted the road to Clamart. Ste. Marie felt in his pocket and withdrew the last of the four letters--the last there could be, for he had no more stamps. The others he had thrown over the wall, one each morning, beginning with the day after he had made the first attempt to bribe old Michel. As he had expected, twenty-four hours of avaricious reflection had proved too much for that gnomelike being.

One each day he had thrown over the wall, weighted with a pebble tucked loosely under the flap of the improvised envelope, in such a manner that it would drop but when the letter struck the ground beyond. And each following day he had gone with high hopes to the appointed place under the cedar-tree to pick figs of thistles, lilac blooms in late July. But there had been nothing there.

"Turn your back, Michel!" said Ste. Marie.

And the old man said, from a little distance: "It is turned, Monsieur. I see nothing. Monsieur throws little stories at the birds to amuse himself. It does not concern me."

Ste. Marie slipped a pebble under the flap of the envelope and threw his letter over the wall. It went like a soaring bird, whirling horizontally, and it must have fallen far out in the middle of the road near the tramway. For the third time that morning the prisoner drew a sigh. He said, "You may turn round now, my friend," and the old Michel faced him. "We have shot our last arrow," said he. "If this also fails, I think--well, I think the bon Dieu will have to help us then.--Michel,"

he inquired, "do you know how to pray?"

"Sacred thousand swine, no!" cried the ancient gnome, in something between astonishment and horror. "No, Monsieur. 'Pas mon metier, ca!" He shook his head rapidly from side to side like one of those toys in a shop-window whose heads oscillate upon a pivot. But all at once a gleam of inspiration sparkled in his lone eye. "There is the old Justine!" he suggested. "Toujours sur les genoux, cette imbecile la."

"In that case," said Ste. Marie, "you might ask the lady to say one little extra prayer for--the pebble I threw at the birds just now.

Hein?" He withdrew from his pocket the last two louis d'or, and Michel took them in a trembling hand. There remained but the note of fifty francs and some silver.

"The prayer shall be said, Monsieur," declared the gardener. "It shall be said. She shall pray all night or I will kill her."

"Thank you," said Ste. Marie. "You are kindness itself. A gentle soul."

They turned away to retrace their steps, and Michel rubbed the side of his head with a reflective air.

"The old one is a madman," said he. (The "old one" meant Captain Stewart.) "A madman. Each day he is madder, and this morning he struck me--here on the head, because I was too slow. Eh! a little more of that, and--who knows? Just a little more, a small little! Am I a dog, to be beaten? Hein? Je ne le crois pas. He!" He called Captain Stewart two unprintable names, and after a moment's thought he called him an animal, which is not so much of an anti-climax as it may seem, because to call anybody an animal in French is a serious matter.

The gardener was working himself up into something of a quiet pa.s.sion, and Ste. Marie said:

"Softly, my friend! Softly!" It occurred to him that the man's resentment might be of use later on, and he said: "You speak the truth.

The old one is an animal, and he is also a great rascal."

But Michel betrayed the makings of a philosopher. He said, with profound conviction: "Monsieur, all men are great rascals. It is I who say it."

And at that Ste. Marie had to laugh.

He had not consciously directed his feet, but without direction they led him round the corner of the rose-gardens and toward the rond point. He knew well whom he would find there. She had not failed him during the past three days. Each morning he had found her in her place, and for his allotted hour--which more than once stretched itself out to nearly two hours, if he had but known--they had sat together on the stone bench, or, tiring of that, had walked under the trees beyond.

Long afterward Ste. Marie looked back upon these hours with, among other emotions, a great wonder--at himself and at her. It seemed to him then one of the strangest relationships--intimacies, for it might well be so called--that ever existed between a man and a woman, and he was amazed at the ease, the unconsciousness, with which it had come about.

But during this time he did not allow himself to wonder or to examine, scarcely even to think. The hours were golden hours, unrelated, he told himself, to anything else in his life or in his interests. They were like pleasant dreams, very sweet while they endured, but to be put away and forgotten upon the waking. Only in that long afterward he knew that they had not been put away, that they had been with him always, that the morning hour had remained in his thoughts all the rest of the long day, and that he had waked upon the morrow with a keen and exquisite sense of something sweet to come.

It was a strange fool's paradise that the man dwelt in, and in some small, vague measure he must, even at the time, have known it, for it is certain that he deliberately held himself away from thought--realization; that he deliberately shut his eyes, held his ears lest he should hear or see.

That he was not faithless to his duty has been shown. He did his utmost there, but he was for the time helpless save for efforts to communicate with Richard Hartley, and those efforts could consume no more than ten minutes out of the weary day.

So he drifted, wilfully blind to bearings, wilfully deaf to Sound of warning or peril, and he found a companionship sweeter and fuller and more perfect than he had ever before known in all his life, though that is not to say very much, because sympathetic companionships between men and women are very rare indeed, and Ste. Marie had never experienced anything which could fairly be called by that name. He had had, as has been related, many flirtations, and not a few so-called love-affairs, but neither of these two sorts of intimacies are of necessity true intimacies at all; men often feel varying degrees of love for women without the least true understanding or sympathy or real companionship.

He was wondering, as he bore round the corner of the rose-gardens on this day, in just what mood he would find her. It seemed to him that in their brief acquaintance he had seen her in almost all the moods there are, from bitter gloom to the irrepressible gayety of a little child. He had told her once that she was like an organ, and she had laughed at him for being pretentious and high-flown, though she could upon occasion be quite high-flown enough herself for all ordinary purposes.

He reached the cleared margin of the rond point, and a little cold fear stirred in him when he did not hear her singing under her breath, as she was wont to do when alone, but he went forward and she was there in her place upon the stone bench. She had been reading, but the book lay forgotten beside her and she sat idle, her head laid back against the thick stems of shrubbery which grew behind, her hands in her lap. It was a warm, still morning, with the promise of a hot afternoon, and the girl was dressed in something very thin and transparent and cool-looking, open in a little square at the throat and with sleeves which came only to her elbows. The material was pale and dull yellow, with very vaguely defined green leaves in it, and against it the girl's dark and clear skin glowed rich and warm and living, as pearls glow and seem to throb against the dead tints of the fabric upon which they are laid.

She did not move when he came before her, but looked up to him gravely without stirring her head.